


The Thing That Makes it Worth the Journeying

by Arsenic



Series: Dickens-verse [34]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Death, Gen, dickens-verse - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronon wasn't raised by wolves: wolves have a sense of pack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing That Makes it Worth the Journeying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chibifukurou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibifukurou/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta, ihearttwojacks, all remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Using the "isolation" square on my hc_bingo

Ronon wasn't raised by wolves. He probably would have been better off. He didn't remember a whole bunch from his family other than there being a _lot_ of kids. He thought he might have been the youngest, but he wasn't sure.

When he was eight, they went on a road trip where they drove through West Virginia and left him at a rest station. He tried flagging down cars, but there weren't many around, and after being scared by the first person who picked him up, he decided hiding in the woods for a bit was his best plan of action.

In hindsight that would seem crazy, but surprisingly it had actually worked out for a bit. He'd grown up in a house not far from a forest, and being out of the house had always been better than being in it. One of his first-grade teachers had taken note of his interest in trees and taught him all kinds of things, like where to find berries, and what kind of leaves made cuts hurt less.

He found the best hiding places for when hunters and campers came through, spots where he could spy on them. They unknowingly taught him survival skills. Occasionally he sneaked into the camps, stealing a blanket, a flint stone, and once, a cooked rabbit. People always assumed it was bears. Ronon was pretty sure bears would make more of a mess, but the presumption worked to his advantage.

He lasted out the winter in a cave, wishing he had a bear to cuddle with, even if it probably would have eaten him. The warmth would have been worth it. Fires and blankets were nice, sure, but bears would be toasty to snuggle up against.

He foraged, scavenged, stole, and hid his way through three years, according to the seasons. Then he got caught.

*

They tranqued him, the people who found him. Shot him with a dart that penetrated his thigh. He would never find out why there were in the woods, or how they knew he was there. He would never know if they were fight organizers, or just people who knew how to trade a kid for cash.

He lost track of time in the cells. The concrete, the chemically-compounded nutrients they were fed, the lack of sun or trees or even dirt ate away at him. A couple of the other kids tried to get him to talk, or at least eat, but he was uninterested in both.

They forced a feeding tube down his throat while he was conscious. After that, he ate, but felt no more need to talk than before. He didn't want to know these people he was forced to hurt, most of them smaller than he, if not necessarily younger. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was still the baby of the family, the kid who'd always been picked on, up until he'd been tossed away.

In the forest, small animals were wounded all the time. It usually meant their death, although Ronon had seen a few cases where the animal in question made a recovery. But in the predator-prey system, the larger animal almost always won, and Ronon had sometimes mourned the birds—baby and adult—that never came back to the nest, the rabbits and squirrels that disappeared. In the cages he felt like a predator, but worse, one who only plays with its prey, doesn't even eat it, put it to good use.

They could force him to fight by way of punishments he eventually couldn't take anymore—burns, beatings, making him drink something that caused him to be sure he was dying—but they couldn't force him to be friends with those he fought against. Or so he thought.

*

John and Rodney gave no quarter. They arrived at the same time, and Ronon was compelled to wake up a little by Rodney's loud bravado. It was John's quiet willpower to work with Jamie and Kane to create an infrastructure in the group, a team of sorts, that broke through Ronon's contentedness with being on his own.

Until John and Rodney, Ronon hadn't allowed himself to acknowledge wanting to be part of a social structure. He'd never been before, not with his family, not in the forest, and not here. He always told himself that he couldn't want what he didn't know. But he had eyes. He could see. Despite not having lived among them for some time, he was human.

And he wanted. 

John was a tricky bastard, and would find little ways to draw Ronon out of his shell. First it was asking for fighting tips. John was scrappy, but he did need some help. Kat had done a number on him in his first match. Ronon wanted to tell him to ask Finn or Kane or Tasha, but they weren't in the cell, and he was.

Then John tricked him into giving some of his food to Rodney. Or, well, after the third time Ronon watched John give Rodney a third or half of his food, he couldn't stand feeling like an asshole anymore. Rodney had some kind of sickness. The lack of food was weakening him in a way that it wasn't the rest of them. Ronon was constantly hungry and had a headache pretty much full-time, but he wasn't dizzy and he never hallucinated.

John needed his food, though, and as long as he ate enough not to have a tube forced down his throat, Ronon didn't care whether he got enough to eat. He figured they had to take him outside if he died, had to get rid of his body. Then, at least, he'd be free of the confines.

Ronon didn't die, despite the sharing. Rodney slowly did, and no amount of help on either his or John's part could stop it. After that, John disappeared into himself. Not even Duo, who could reach pretty much anyone, could get him to resurface.

Ronon shouldn't have cared, but, well, he missed Rodney too. What John was doing wasn't fair. Also, without understanding why, he was pretty sure he owed John a save.

*

No amount of talking to John or offering food or anything they'd tried was working, so Ronon decided to go with a different tactic: he refused to fight. They locked him in a box roughly the size of an ottoman. He got sick on himself from the feeling of the walls pressing in on him. He had no idea how long he was in there for, long enough that he became delirious.

He couldn't stand when they took him out. They cuffed him to hook on the wall in the "shower" room and blasted him with water so hard it bruised. He couldn't feel his fingers or toes for the cold when they stopped. They threw him back in one of the cells, snickering and muttering something about bringing him pants later.

His hair was even more heavy than usual with all the water in it and he was racked with cold. He tucked into a ball and closed his eyes, trying to imagine fire, imagine summer days that were sticky and hard to breathe through.

"Fuck," someone—Une—said. Someone else, someone bigger, oh, Kane, wrapped himself around Ronon, trying to lock in the heat. Une curled into his other side, and Dory did her best in the space left.

Kane said, "You can't do that again."

Ronon wasn't sure he could. But he hoped, if push came to shove, he'd be able to for John.

*

After the next round of fights, Ronon and John were put back in a cell together along with Jamie and Pavel. John was a complete mess after taking on Kane. Which didn't stop him from telling Ronon, "Don't—just, don't, okay?"

When Ronon urged John to take a little bit of his food, John did, with a roll of his eyes and a knowing glance. He also let Ronon pillow John's head in his lap, take care of him as best he could. Ronon couldn't sleep; he was too relieved.

*

Shortly after Sam and Jen took the two of them home, Sam caught Ronon sleeping in the backyard one night. She woke him up by calling his name and asked, "Hey, whatcha doing out here?"

Ronon usually let John speak for him. John seemed to know the kinds of things adults wanted to hear. Ronon wasn’t a great liar, or good at reading people, so he defaulted to the truth. "Needed to breathe."

Sam tilted her head. "Is it too warm in your room?"

Ronon shook his head. John was tucked quietly into his twin bed, sleeping through the night. But now that Ronon had the ability to get outside, it was impossible for him to sleep with the option beckoning. He'd wanted to get up in the tree, so as to be able to see in John's window, watch over him. He wasn't sure how much muscle memory he had retained, though, and worried about falling out. Finally he said, "Don't do too well indoors."

He expected her to tell him that he needed to learn, to try and explain why it was better for him to be in there with them. Instead she asked, "If I go grab us a couple of sleeping bags, would you let me stay out here with you tonight? We'll figure out a more permanent plan in the morning, but I don't like the thought of you out here alone."

Ronon blinked. "I'm used to being alone." 

It was both true and untrue, seeing as how it was hard for him to go a day now without a smile from John or the sound of Jo's voice, or both. But in this, his need for space, he knew he did not conform, was essentially on his own.

Sam smiled. "I'm sure you are, but our pasts need not define our futures."

It took Ronon a bit to understand that the offer was still standing. He glanced up at the stars and took in a slow breath. "Yeah, um. That'd be…good."

Sam went inside to grab the sleeping bags while Ronon was still watching the night sky, not feeling so far removed from the universe just this once.


End file.
